Evocative portrait of lensman will wow readers

Weegee: Serial Photographer – from Max de Radigues and Wauter Mannaert – has much to recommend it.

The book is based on a true story. It centres on a fascinating figure who was the best in his field.

It transports the reader to another time and place. And it can be read in one sitting.

What’s not to like?

This is one of the strongest pieces ever out of East Coast publisher Conundrum Press.

The publishing house’s offerings get more and more interesting.

The titular character is a news photographer in New York whose main subjects are corpses on the police beat.

“Weegee’s made for the streets. Murder’s my work, my true stock-in-trade,” he boasts in the third person at one crime scene.

Although Weegee, also known as Arthur Fellig, may be the Big Apple’s best photographer, he yearns to be taken seriously as an artist.

His proficiency comes at a price: He dreams constantly that because he is so good at portraits of death, he must be a killer himself to keep himself at the top of his game.

I can’t think of a graphic-novel precedent for Weegee, but I do have a cinematic one: The Godfather, Part II. If you remember the prequel portions of that lush 1975 motion picture, you’ll have some idea of the way Radigues and Mannaert bring the past slums of New York to life.

This is a rare, evocative look at the way it was.

Weegee is the most creative graphic novel I have reviewed in this space for quite a while.

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